Days of Future Past: Wistful World War II
by KnitChick1979
Summary: Set in my AU Torchwood universe. Jacqueline tells Iana the story of how she first met the Doctor. Wrote this back in August as a first try with these characters before setting out to play with them in NaNoWriMo. Comments and criticism welcomed!


Days of Future Past: Wistful World War II by KnitChick1979

"Coffee?"

Captain Jacqueline Harkness looked up from the piles of paperwork that were starting to give her a headache to see Iana Jones standing there, holding out a fresh cup of coffee. She gratefully reached out for it. "Just what I needed, perfect timing!" she said. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. I noticed you seemed to be staring at the same page for quite a while and I figured you could use a break," Iana said. She sat down on the other side of Jacqueline's desk. "Why don't you leave those for the morning?"

Jacqueline didn't answer at first, busy gulping down the coffee like it was the last cup on Earth. "Because in the morning I have a meeting with UNIT. This has to get done...I just don't quite feel like dealing with budget numbers after the week I've had."

Iana nodded. She was feeling a bit worn too, after a week of exceptionally frequent Rift openings. There were five more Weevil residents in the cells, two crates of alien artifacts sitting by Toshiyuki's desk, three alien bodies in the short term storage in the morgue waiting on Owena's attention, and Iana herself had just finished filling out a two-inch thick stack of paperwork for all these new arrivals, paperwork that was now in Jacqueline's pile awaiting her signature. "If only the Rift would take things, for once, and take all this paperwork off your hands," she deadpanned.

Jacqueline laughed. "I wish! I doubt it would help. UNIT would still want their meeting, and the government would still be demanding their paperwork." She finished off the cup and leaned back in her chair, propping her feet on the corner of her desk. "Still...I could afford a few minutes break from this. Those numbers were starting to dance, and that's never a good sign."

Iana took Jacqueline's coffee mug and refilled it from the carafe she'd brought in. "I suppose not." She handed the mug back to Jacqueline and sat back down. "Might I ask a question, ma'am?"

"You might, if you stop calling me ma'am," Jacqueline said. "I know I'm the boss, but we're not a military unit, you don't have to stand on protocol with me."

Iana managed a small smile. "Sorry," she said. "Jacqueline...how did you end up here? I mean...it seems like you've been here forever, not that it's possible, but..." She trailed off, searching for the right words.

Jacqueline stared into her coffee. "It does seem like I've been here forever," she said quietly. "Since...oh...eighteen-seventy-nine was it? Or maybe eighteen-eighty?"

Iana stared at her. "Don't you mean nineteen-seventy-nine?" she asked.

Jacqueline grinned. "Nope. Eighteen-seventy-nine. Queen Victoria decided that I would be of better use here than working as a member of her bodyguard, after a little run-in with a werewolf."

"A werewolf."

Jacqueline nodded. "Haven't you ever wondered why the Royal Family leads such sheltered and scheduled lives?" Iana shook her head. "Werewolves have to be careful around the full moon."

"You know...we never know when to believe your stories...surely the Royal Family can't be werewolves!" Iana scoffed.

"When you've been around as long as I have, there's no longer any point in making up stories," Jacqueline replied. "But that's a story for another time. It's a long one, and I can't take a long break, at least not tonight."

"Oh."

Jacqueline quietly sipped her coffee for a moment. Then, an idea came to her that brought her to her feet. "I know! If you can make sense of these numbers, I'll tell you the story of when I stopped being a conman, that's a good one."

Iana took the sheet from Jacqueline and peered at the figures. "Hmm...do you have a calculator handy? I think I see a math error here."

Jacqueline put down the coffee mug and sifted through the debris on her desk, finally pulling an antiquated adding machine out from under a particularly large pile of papers. She handed it to Iana and flopped back down in her chair.

Fifteen minutes later, the paperwork was corrected and signed, stacked neatly by the door, ready for the morning meeting with UNIT and various other government officials. Iana had refilled the carafe and both of their coffee mugs, ready for a rare story from Jacqueline's past.

"So, you were a conman?" she asked.

"I'm not proud of it. I wasn't aware of what the Time Agency was like when I signed up. I thought it would be an adventure. I thought I'd be sent to stop volcanoes from wiping out towns, prevent assassinations, create peace where there was war..." Jacqueline trailed off, shaking her head.

"What did you do?" Iana asked.

"Well, I can't tell you all of it. Still under a gag order...and I'm not proud of it. But my last assignment...I thought, this is more like it. I was told to join the Royal Air Force and help Britain win the war early. My partner and I were supposed to make sure one of the bombing raids during the Battle of Berlin landed on Hitler's bunker, take him out at least six months earlier than his suicide in the original history. Piece of cake, I thought. Great idea, I thought." Jacqueline paused and stared intently at the crop of golden coral-like growth she kept on her desk. "Then she showed up."

"Who?"

"The Doctor. With her latest boy-toy, Ross Tyler. I was in the Chula warship my partner and I had borrowed, checking readings, when I see this cutie in tight jeans hanging from a rope in the middle of an air raid. I rescued him, and just when I'm sealing the deal on a date, the Doctor finds us. Lands her spaceship right on the roof of mine! How she found an invisible spaceship in the middle of a German air raid is still beyond me," Jacqueline laughed. "Proceeds to lecture me about having a Chula ship, and not mucking up timelines...I guess I got a little cocky. Told her my mission. It's a good thing we had lost all contact from the Time Agency the day before, or I would have been toast. Though, toast might have been the better alternative."

"Why do you say that?" whispered Iana, completely enthralled.

"Because then I got the even bigger lecture..."

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

Jacqueline leaned back in the command chair of her warship and yawned. "Are you through yet?"

The Doctor rose to her full not-quite-five-feet height and glared at her. "No, I am not! This is exactly what I mean! You Time Agents think you know everything! You're just little babies compared to my people; you've only just taken a first baby step into the time vortex! My people have been watching over all of time since this universe began! So don't you give me that guff young lady!"

Jacqueline rolled her eyes and sat up straight in her chair. "Listen, I don't know who your people are, lady, but I don't care! I am a duly designated representative of the Time Agency and I am here on an important mission," she snapped. "Now if you'll take your little time box off my ship, I have to finish preparing for tomorrow's bombing raid, or my whole mission is scrapped."

"What's your mission?" Ross asked quietly.

Jacqueline regarded the skinny blonde for a moment. "I'm here to make sure Hitler doesn't live beyond the end of this week. This war will be over in a fortnight, and the repercussions from this war will be lessened," she bragged. "Now if you'll excuse me..." She went to turn back to the main controls but the Doctor stopped her chair from turning.

"This is exactly what I mean! Repercussions? Have you thought about the repercussions from changing history?" she screeched.

"Yes! All of the soldiers lost on D-Day will live! None of the atomic bombs will be dropped and those millions of deaths will be averted! Countless lives will be saved from the concentration camps!" Jacqueline said. "Of course we've thought about the repercussions!"

The Doctor shook her head. "You don't understand time well enough. By changing history so drastically, you're completely altering the universe. Every single person who was born after this point in time will cease to exist. That's not saving millions of lives in a war, that's eliminating billions of lives that will not have been created because their branch of the timeline was wiped out."

Jacqueline stared into the Doctor's eyes. *She can't be telling the truth,* Jacqueline thought. *Besides...there's no such thing as a Time Lord, we were told they were myth!* She shook her head. "You're just saying that so I'll abort my mission. Sorry, no, I won't go back to the Time Agency and say a so-called Time Lord stopped me from doing my job."

The Doctor opened her mouth as if to say something, but instead just turned around and headed for the stairs to the upper hatch. "Come on, Ross, I can see we're wasting our breath." She started up the stairway, headed for her own ship. "I will still stop you," she vowed, then ran into her strange-looking ship. Ross flashed a sympathetic smile toward Jacqueline before running after his mistress.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

"Was she right? About people ceasing to exist?" Iana asked.

Jacqueline contemplated the coral again. "You know, I never really found out for sure. Maybe she was. We were always told that the Time Lords, and Gallifrey, were gone. A myth." She snorted. "Well, I guess the head of the Time Agency was partly right. Gallifrey is gone. Was gone. Will be gone... but its inhabitants are no myth. I think they told us that to control us."

"Control you?" Iana whispered.

Jacqueline grew silent. "As I said...I wasn't aware of what the Time Agency was really like when I signed up."

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

Jacqueline barely looked up when her partner teleported into the ship, focused on refining the sub-etheric beam that connected them to Time Agency Headquarters. There had been no communications of any kind from Headquarters in over seventy-two hours, and that worried her. Usually on a mission there were at least daily updates, even if they were brief news updates or vortex weather forecasts. Beyond a cryptic mission update three days prior, there had been nothing.

"What are you fussed about there?" Joanna Hart asked, pulling off her RAF uniform cap and letting her long brown hair down.

"Trying to restore communications with headquarters. We haven't gotten even a weather message in three days, don't you think that odd?"

"So maybe we're stuck in another time loop. But this time, you're the wife!" Joanna retorted, flopping down on the bed. "What time's your mission again?"

"I have to report at sixteen hundred hours and we most likely will be airborne by eighteen hundred," Jacqueline said. "Did you get that specialized tracker ready to be installed in my bomb yet?"

"It's hiding in the radar control building," Joanna replied. "Ready to be smuggled out and installed as soon as the Germans start their bombing raid tonight."

"Good," Jacqueline said. "Now if only we'd hear from headquarters so I wouldn't feel so nervous about a potential change in plans."

"Don't worry about it. You sleeping in here again tonight?" Joanna asked, interfacing her wrist strap with the power port located in the bunk.

"Of course," Jacqueline replied. "Much nicer than the BOQ. Why you actually like hiding in the WAAF is beyond me."

"And why you enjoy posing as a male officer is beyond me," Joanna retorted. "What's wrong with wanting to be a lady?"

"Ladies don't get to fly planes," Jacqueline responded. "Where's the adventure in reading a radar screen?"

"The adventure is not being killed," Joanna sighed. "See you in two hours when we insert the lucky bomb?"

"Roger that, I shall see you at the rendezvous," Jacqueline replied as Joanna teleported out. She shrugged off the thick uniform jacket and headed into the small lavatory facility they had built at the back of the Chula ship to clean up before undertaking one of the more dangerous parts of her mission -- sneaking alien technology into her RAF airplane in the middle of a secure and on alert base.

The insistent beep from her wrist strap reminded Jacqueline that she only had ten minutes left to get to the rendezvous point. Thankful she was sneaking in under cover of darkness and not staying long, Jacqueline got dressed in women's clothes for the first time since they'd landed in the midst of World War II and gathered the various and sundry devices she needed for carefully dismantling and reassembling a vintage bomb. She double checked the readings and programs running at the front of the ship, and then entered the rendezvous coordinates into her wrist strap, disappearing from the invisible spaceship with moments to spare.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

"Wait, wait, you mean to tell me you were posing as a man that whole time??" Iana cried incredulously.

Jacqueline grinned brightly and shifted position in the large desk chair. "Women weren't allowed to fly in those days. Sure, we could have both worked in the women's auxiliary forces, and teleported in to doctor a bomb being carried by one of the men, but I wasn't about to leave it up to chance. Besides, it was fun!"

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

Jacqueline's eyes took a moment to adjust to the pitch blackness of the aircraft hangar. She checked the display on her wrist strap, then flicked on her tiny torch to light the way to her plane.

"Right to the nanosecond. Cutting it a bit close there, Harkness?" Joanna hissed from the shadows beneath the plane's wing.

"What? I needed to freshen up! You haven't been in the ship running scans and compiling data," Jacqueline hissed back. "Do you have the device?"

Joanna held it up. "Do my eyes deceive me or are you actually wearing a bra?" she asked as Jacqueline ducked under the belly of the plane to where she had a bomb ready for the operation.

Jacqueline rolled her eyes, placing her bag of tools on the ground and kneeling beside the bomb. "What, just because I'm the pilot doesn't mean I get to be a girl once in a while? Gimmie."

Joanna blew her a raspberry as she handed over the deceptively small navigation device. "Sure but do you have to be rude too?"

"Yes, now be quiet and let me concentrate or I'll end up blowing the whole hanger. Go keep watch or something." Jacqueline set the device gently on the ground and pulled out a sonic scalpel, carefully slicing an end off the bomb so as to reach its inner workings. Joanna ducked under the plane and jumped up on the far wing, sitting with her back against the main fuselage, watching for any sign of guard patrol or other intruders.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

"So did she show up?" Iana asked excitedly.

"Who?"

"Who else, the Doctor! You know, to carry out her threat to stop you!"

"All in good time," Jacqueline teased.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

Jacqueline had the bomb carefully spread out across a tiny patch of ground and was soldering the leads from their control device into the power source of the bomb when the entire hangar shook violently. Jacqueline took a deep breath, worried that the shaking had jarred the detonator, but nothing happened.

Joanna ducked down and waved a hand under the plane to get her attention. "Hurry it up! I think someone's coming! I heard a weird noise as that last bomb went off, sounded almost alien but I couldn't tell," she hissed.

Jacqueline didn't answer, but she gave a slight nod to let Joanna know she heard. Trying to ignore the trembling of the ground, she finished connecting the Agency's device to the control module of the bomb and began to reassemble it as quickly as she could.

"Stop right there!" Joanna pulled out her sonic blaster and aimed it at the pair that were approaching her. "Who are you and what are you doing here?"

"I don't have a quarrel with you. Where is Jack Harkness?"

Joanna flipped off the safety on her weapon. "I don't know who you're talking about. Leave this hanger now, or I'll shoot."

"I don't want to fight you."

Jacqueline peered under the plane to see the familiar red trainers the Doctor wore with her natty pinstriped suit. Muttering an Altairian curse, she hurried to seal up the bomb and hoped Joanna could keep the tenacious Doctor occupied long enough for her to put the bomb back and make her escape.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

"She did come to stop you! But wait, why did she ask where Jack Harkness was?" Iana asked.

"Well, I was under cover. I needed someone's place to take," Jacqueline explained. "Group Captain Jack Harkness was an American volunteer in the 133rd Squadron in the Royal Air Force. His plane disappeared in a bombing raid right before the time we were inserting in the time. So I took his identity."

Iana stared at her for a long time, then whispered, "So... Jacqueline Harkness is not your real name?"

Jacqueline smiled. "It is now."

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

"Hey, there he is!" Ross said, pointing to Jacqueline as she stood up to secure the bomb in the plane.

The Doctor looked to where he was pointing. "Don't be silly, that can't be him, that's a woman!"

Joanna pushed between them and the plane, keeping the sonic blaster trained on the Doctor. "Final warning! Leave this hangar by the time I count to ten or I shoot!"

"Jack! Don't do this!" Ross called over the plane.

Jacqueline finished securing the bomb and flipped open her wrist strap, planning a quick teleport out, but when she tried to activate the teleport, nothing happened. The read-out showed the heavy metals in the air throughout the area, a result of the heavy German bombing, were interfering with her ship's teleport systems.

"Five...six...seven..." Joanna counted.

Jacqueline cleared the teleport coordinates and brought up a layout of the hangar they were in instead. She noted the exits in relation to where she, Joanna, Ross, and the Doctor were and chose a likely doorway.

"Eight...nine..."

Jacqueline spotted her chosen doorway and took off at a run, just as Joanna counted ten. But before her partner could start shooting, Ross pulled the Doctor by the arm and pointed to Jacqueline's retreating form.

"Jack! Come back here! Jack...when did you grow breasts?" Ross called across the hangar.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

Iana giggled. "He actually said that!?"

Jacqueline laughed too. "Yes, he did. I guess my cover was good, he had no idea I was a woman until he saw the girls bobbing along as I ran for my life."

Iana gaped at her, then laughed even harder. "I would have loved to have seen that! So did you manage to get out of there?"

Jacqueline nodded. "It was a close call, I almost ran into the path of several bomb hits, but I managed to get to the watch tower where we'd tethered the spaceship by the skin of my teeth. Ran up the tower and dove off onto the roof of the ship. Certainly startled the guard on duty."

"What about your partner?"

"Oh Joanna held her own."

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

Ross bolted off after Jacqueline's retreating form, while the Doctor turned on Joanna, fire in her eyes.

"Why did your partner deceive us?" she demanded.

Joanna shrugged, still keeping her gun trained on the Doctor. "We're undercover. If she had told you she was really a woman, that would have compromised her cover." She flicked a switch with her thumb and the gun made an audible charging noise. "And our cover cannot be compromised, is that understood?"

"Your mission cannot be completed, is that understood?" the Doctor retorted. "You're sacrificing billions of lives if you go through with this."

"You're just saying that because you don't want us to succeed," Joanna said. "They taught us all about Time Lord treachery in the Agency. Now, are you going to leave or do I have to shoot?"

Ross jogged back in, interrupting any response the Doctor might have made. "I lost him...her...uh..."

"We're going," the Doctor said. "But don't think this is over." She took Ross by the arm and they headed to the hangar door they'd entered from. Joanna waited until they had exited, then ran over to the door and locked it with her sonic blaster.

"Joanna? Come in!" Jacqueline's voice came from her wrist strap.

Joanna opened the strap and hissed, "Some covert operation that was!"

"Stop it! We can argue later," Jacqueline replied. "Listen, the teleport is down because of all the heavy metals in the air from the bombing. And I had to move the ship after a guard saw me dive into it."

"Dive into it!?" Joanna screeched.

"I'll explain later. Meet me at the far end of the women's bunker in five minutes, okay?"

"Ground level or roof?"

"Where else? You know I love roofs!"

Joanna groaned. "Shut it. I'll see you there." She closed the flap on her Vortex Manipulator and headed for the far door of the hangar, hoping the bombing would continue just long enough to give her cover to get back to the ship unseen.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

Iana frowned. "So, you got the device thing in the bomb and got away?"

Jacqueline nodded. "We thought things were going to go off without a hitch. I got Joanna, we checked over the systems and everything was fine, just the teleport circuits were broken. Well, not broken, but interfered with. She went back to the bunkers, I freshened up in the ship and snuck into the BOQ before everyone woke up and got ready to go out on the bombing run we knew was going to happen."

"Bombing run?"

"Part of the Battle of Berlin," Jacqueline explained. "One of the biggest battles of the war, for the RAF at least, and the Time Agency felt it was the best opportunity to off Hitler early."

"But it didn't quite happen?"

"Nope. The Doctor still managed to interfere with our plans."

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

Jacqueline climbed aboard the de Havilland Mosquito, shivering as the chill November wind cut through the woolen uniform. She settled into the cockpit and, before her navigator arrived, called Joanna to check in.

"Yeah, what do you want Harkness?"

"Grumpy much?" Jacqueline retorted.

"I just want to get this mission over with and get home. I'm not happy with how last night went," Joanna replied. "I'm on my way up to the radar tower."

"I'm in the plane. Everything will be fine, trust me. What can the Doctor do? We kept her away from the plane and the bomb last night," Jacqueline said. "Oh, gotta go, my navigator is here."

"Good luck, see you tonight," Joanna said. "If you get Hitler, drinks on me!"

Jacqueline laughed. "Deal! Over and out!" She closed the cover on her wrist strap and slid her uniform sleeve over it just as the hatch opened and her navigator scrambled in. "Afternoon Tom!"

"Afternoon Jack," Thomas Harper replied. "Ready to do some damage!"

"Of course I am! What part of Germany are we headed for?" She settled into her seat and started to pull on the restraints.

"We're part of the Mosquito squad set to be 'distractions' by bombing other towns while the main squad hits Berlin and the second squad hits Mannheim and Ludwigschafen," Tom explained. "We're headed for the upper Bavaria area, drop a few bombs near one of Hitler's houses, see if we can't scare him a bit."

"Sounds good to me!" Jacqueline replied. Inwardly she cheered, everything was going according to plan. Still, the Doctor's lecture haunted her.

Within the hour, the planes were in the air. Jacqueline was able to ignore her nervousness about the mission on the long flight to Germany, enjoying the experience of piloting a vintage de Havilland Mosquito. When they reached the German border, the squads split up, and she led a small flight of planes toward upper Bavaria and her secret target, the Führer himself.

"We are crossing the border into the Traunstein district. Preparing armaments," Tom announced.

"Acknowledged," Jacqueline replied, and flipped open her wrist strap, ready to set the program into motion as soon as the bombs were dropped.

Within minutes, Tom was announcing, "Over target! Bombs away!!"

Jacqueline watched her display, and when she saw that her doctored bomb had left the plane, she tapped the button on her wrist strap that activated the Time Agency's navigation device.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

"And that's when it all seemed to go wrong," Jacqueline sighed. "Speaking of which...I need more coffee."

"Wait, you can't stop there! What went wrong?" Iana asked.

"I'm not stopping! I'm just refilling my cup." Jacqueline topped off her coffee mug from the carafe and sat back down. "To this day I'm not quite sure of all the details, but the Doctor did admit that she returned after we made our escape from the hangar, and she did some sabotage of her own."

"Like what?"

"Well, the technology in our little wrist straps is alien," Jacqueline explained, holding up her wrist to illustrate. She opened the strap and let Iana take a good look at the device she always wore. "We knew it was alien. Which aliens, they never told us. But a lot of the technology the Time Agency used was appropriated from aliens...and from what I've learned since I left, it was probably illegally appropriated. The little device I put in the bomb? Built by the Time Agency, and most likely alien technology. No...make that definitely alien technology."

"What, the technology backfired?" Iana asked as Jacqueline closed the cover on her wrist strap.

"Not exactly..."

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

"That's weird," Tom said.

"What is?" Jacqueline asked, banking the plane to avoid anti-aircraft fire.

"One of the bombs...it disappeared. Mid-air, in a flash of blue-ish light!"

"Don't be silly...you probably saw an explosion on the ground," Jacqueline responded. Inwardly, though, she panicked. It almost sounded like he was describing a teleport, the kind of teleport technology the Time Agency used.

"If you say so," Tom said, not at all convinced. "Look out!"

Jacqueline tried to turn the Mosquito into a steep dive to avoid the shooting but the wing of the plane was clipped and caught fire. She swore, banking the plane around and heading back towards Britain. "I think our mission is over for the night."

"You think we're going to have to bail?" Tom asked.

"I'm hoping I can put that fire out. Got your oxygen mask handy?"

"Yes, why?"

"Put it on. We're heading up to high altitudes," Jacqueline said, pulling back on the steering column and aiming the plane upwards into the clouds, hoping to both starve the fire of oxygen and find some moisture in the clouds to help put it out.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

"Your plane was on fire?" Iana gasped.

"No, my wing was on fire. The plane was fine. Though, if I hadn't gotten lucky and flew through a thundercloud full of rain, we might have crash landed in Germany," Jacqueline said.

"So you made it back to Britain? Safely?"

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

"Entering British airspace, we're almost home! I can't believe we made it!" Tom exclaimed.

"Me too, that was a lucky break. Let's see if I can raise the tower on the radio," Jacqueline replied. *And see if Joanna's heard from the Agency about the success of our mission,* she thought. "Group Captain Harkness calling Little Snoring tower, come in please."

"That's odd, I don't see any German planes so they couldn't be maintaining radio silence...could they?" Tom asked.

"I don't know," Jacqueline said. "But I hope they respond before we get to the airfield, I don't think the plane can hold up much longer!"

"There's the landing strip! But...where is the tower?"

Jacqueline bit her lip to keep from swearing. "Probably that cloud of smoke and smoldering wood," she said. "Looks like the Germans came while we were bombing them."

"Oh no!" Tom gasped. Then he looked at his gauges. "Uh oh, better land fast Jack, we're low on fuel and starting to lose altitude!"

Jacqueline pulled herself away from the sight of the ruined radar tower and focused on the plane's instrumentation. "Right. Let's see if we can get this bird down in one piece."

She flipped switches and eyeballed the runway. *Right, come on Jacqueline dear, you can do it,* she thought. *It's an old Mosquito, nothing compared to a fussy Arcturan freighter! Just aim and land...I hope!* Lining up the plane, she pulled back on the stick a little bit to scrub off some speed, then lowered the landing gear and tried to keep the plane straight as she headed for the landing strip.

"We've lost one engine!" Tom cried. "The other engine is sputtering!"

"We're almost there...come on, just hold on a little longer!" Jacqueline pleaded.

"It's no use, we're going down!"

Jacqueline checked the altitude indicator. "Too low to bail, so I guess it's hold on tight!!" She felt her stomach somersault as the plane started to plummet toward the all-too-close ground. In an attempt to soften the inevitable crash landing she pulled back hard on the stick, hoping the aileron flaps would still do something to affect their trajectory.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

Iana refilled her cup and sat there sipping the now-lukewarm coffee a moment before she spoke. "Wow. Crash landing. What happened to the tower?"

"That's the interesting part...but I'll get to that in a moment. We survived the crash, actually it wasn't too bad considering. They built those Mosquito planes pretty tough, so the plane didn't shatter when it hit the ground. Tom and I got out quickly, before the plane caught on fire, and managed to get to the nearest barracks," Jacqueline said. "Found out the radar tower had been hit by a single bomb that came out of nowhere. No planes, no warning, just a bomb heading right for the tower. No one knew how many people were up on that tower, but from what I could tell, it didn't sound like anyone had seen Joanna since the explosion."

"Oh no!" Iana gasped.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

Jacqueline refused medical attention for the few small cuts and bruises she had, insisting to the medical teams that their skills were better needed for people who were more severely injured. She insisted to Tom that she was fine and just needed some fresh air, then headed off for a walk across the base.

As soon as she was out of sight of the medical building, she flipped open her wrist strap and tried to call Joanna. "Joanna? Please come in Joanna! Don't do this to me..."

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Jacqueline's head popped up and she saw the Doctor approaching, with Ross by her side. "What do you want?" she snapped.

"To apologize. I only wanted to stop you from carrying out your mission, but I did not mean to hurt your friend," the Doctor said.

"What!?"

"The bomb that hit the radar tower? It was your bomb," the Doctor explained. "After you left the hangar, I returned and reprogrammed your device, so that it would seek out similar alien technology rather than follow the programmed flight plan."

"Except that it didn't," Ross said softly.

"Seek out...wait, what did it do?" Jacqueline asked.

"It teleported back here, and aimed itself for the nearest source of similar alien technology. Your friend's wrist strap, apparently. I'm so sorry, I had no idea the device would do that!" the Doctor said.

"You mean...the bomb...the bomb that I dropped...went after my partner?" Jacqueline stammered. The Doctor simply nodded. "She's...she's gone?"

"We're sorry," Ross said, and pulled Jacqueline into a hug.

After a moment, the Doctor turned to leave. "Time to go."

Ross let go of Jacqueline and pulled the Doctor to the side. There was a hurried whispered conversation, then Ross bounced back over to Jacqueline. "So, um, since your partner is kind of gone and your mission is kind of bust...want to come with us?"

"Excuse me?"

"What Ross is trying to say is, would you like to come traveling with us? See time and space the way it should be seen, stopping to smell the roses instead of heading some place to skew timelines," the Doctor explained.

Jacqueline stared at them a moment. "Wait...you were ready to chew my head off over this mission, you killed my partner, and you're asking me to come with you?"

"Your partner's death was an accident. Besides, you weren't exactly forthcoming with us either."

"Yeah, like pretending to be a man," Ross said.

"I was undercover!" Jacqueline exclaimed.

"So who are you really? Obviously not Jack Harkness," the Doctor asked.

"I can't tell you my real name. It's classified. Jacqueline Harkness will do," she said.

"Nice to meet you Jacqueline," Ross said. "So, will you come with us?"

Jacqueline contemplated her options for a moment. Joanna was gone, she hadn't been able to regain contact with the Time Agency, and her mission had failed. Even though it went against everything she'd been taught by the Agency, heading off with a Time Lord actually seemed like the best option. She sighed. "Let me just grab my things."

"I think your ship is gone," the Doctor said. "It was tethered to the tower...your partner moved it after your squadron took to the air."

"Great," she groaned. "Well I do have a trunk in the BOQ, though, and I'd like a moment...alone...before I leave here."

"We'll wait for you," the Doctor said gently, placing a hand on Jacqueline's shoulder. "Just come to the far end of hangar three, you'll see a blue box, we'll be waiting for you."

"A blue box?"

"You can't miss it!" Ross said.

"Okay," Jacqueline said skeptically. "I'll be there in fifteen minutes."

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

"So after all her arguing with you, the Doctor still invited you to come with her?" Iana asked incredulously.

"That's the way she is. She has a temper, no denying that," Jacqueline said. "But at the core she is a wonderful person, who only wants to make the universe a better place. I learned a lot traveling with her."

"But what about your ship? What about the Time Agency?"

"The ship was gone. I managed to find some of the debris, found one of my trunks somewhat intact in the rubble of the radar tower. My other trunk was in the BOQ. I took a few essentials out and put them in a hidden location on the base. I had a few things in there I didn't want the Doctor poking her nose into. I still didn't trust her at that point. As for the Time Agency...I never got another message from them. I don't know if they just quietly disowned me or if something happened."

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

Jacqueline slipped out of her secret hiding place in the corner of the base and made her way quietly across the field to hangar three. She walked around to the back side of the hangar and stopped dead when she saw a large wooden blue box standing there. It was about eight feet tall, with windows, two narrow doors, and a sign near the top that read "Police Public Call Box." She cautiously knocked on the door.

Ross yanked open the door and his face lit up when he saw her. "You made it! Come in!!" He grabbed her arm and yanked her inside.

"Well well, I heard about the Time Lords having achieved a dimensionally transcendental vehicle but I never believed the rumors were true!" Jacqueline said as she stepped inside and looked around.

The Doctor giggled. "Well that's a change from the usual 'it's bigger on the inside' comment I get when people come in here!"

"It's a neat trick," Jacqueline said. "Wish I could learn how to make my luggage bigger on the inside."

"It comes in handy," the Doctor said. "Welcome to the TARDIS, my wonderful ship! Make yourself at home."

"We're going to see Japan next," Ross said. "Japan back when they had samurai! It's going to be fun!"

"I'm sure it is," Jacqueline chuckled.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

"Well, that's it for story time," Jacqueline said. She looked at the clock on her office wall and jumped up. "Oh! The UNIT administrators will be here in less than an hour!"

Iana looked at her watch. "Goodness, we've been in here all night!" She jumped up and gathered their empty coffee mugs and the empty carafe."

"It was nice though, I haven't thought about the old days in so long," Jacqueline said. "But now I need to hurry if I'm going to be ready for this meeting!"

"Thank you," Iana said. "I really enjoyed your story." She kissed Jacqueline on the cheek and headed out of the office toward the kitchen area.

"You're welcome!" Jacqueline called after her, then jumped down the ladder into the living quarters located below her office to shower and change before UNIT came calling.

THE END


End file.
